


She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not

by Time_Lady_Luna_Halliwell



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Brief mention of kissing, Claustrophobia, Cuddling, F/F, Getting Together, Not necessarily a happy ending, The Buried - Freeform, Too Close I Cannot Breathe, avatar creation, choke, i'm not sure, it just kinda happened like that, maybe not necessarily sad either, original buried avatar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-13 01:41:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21236045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Time_Lady_Luna_Halliwell/pseuds/Time_Lady_Luna_Halliwell
Summary: "Lately, when I’m lying under my blanket with my pillow over my head and I can still hear her voice coming from under the floorboards—whispering to me about how peaceful it is in the soft dirt. How it’s never lonely among the roots of beautiful flowers and towering trees. The way crush of the earth surrounding her is like a sweet embrace. And don’t I want to feel it to? – Those sleepless nights, I wonder what would happen if I laid down in my Garden, among all those lovely flowers. I wonder, and I can almost feel the dirt beneath my nails, the petals brushing my cheeks. The crush of the earth pressing the last gasp of air from my lungs. I can wonder, I can know, and I can feel the weight of it all crushing down on me. I should be ashamed to admit that I can’t say if I am more afraid of what will happen if I say yes, or the fact that there’s an if rather than a when."





	She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Amygdaloid07](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amygdaloid07/gifts).

> I did my best! hope you like it!

Statement of Laura Hollis, regarding the changes in her best friend Everly Wayland upon return from a visit to some distant family. Original statement given October 19th 2015, Audio Recording by Jonathan Sims… Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.

I’ve always loved flowers. The soft petals, the sweet smells, the way they provided friendly perches for bumblebees and other little critters. I’ve had my own Garden since I was ten years old. Someone gave me a copy of The Secret Garden that year and the minute I finished it I ran to my Gran and managed to stutter my way through asking to start my own Garden. She’d looked at me long and hard and I remember getting ready to backtrack, but her lips quirked up in a tiny smile. She’d tousled my hair in a rare show of affection and said, “There’s no harm in it I suppose.”

  
Gran had a greenhouse tucked away in the back of the estate, it was full of beautiful and deadly things I hadn’t been allowed to touch. So, the idea of my own Garden full of bright pretty flowers to tend to and pour love into was just…brilliant. I was a bit of a lonely, kid… Alright ‘a bit’ is an understatement. I was painfully shy, still am, to be honest. But flowers didn’t need you to be good at people, they just needed you to be good at them. So, they were the great love of my life. The other love of my life is my best friend, Everly.

Lately, when I’m lying under my blanket with my pillow over my head and I can still hear her voice coming from under the floorboards—whispering to me about how peaceful it is in the soft dirt. How it’s never lonely among the roots of beautiful flowers and towering trees. The way crush of the earth surrounding her is like a sweet embrace. And don’t I want to feel it to? – Those sleepless nights, I wonder what would happen if I laid down in my Garden, among all those lovely flowers. I wonder, and I can almost feel the dirt beneath my nails, the petals brushing my cheeks. The crush of the earth pressing the last gasp of air from my lungs. I can wonder, I can know, and I can feel the weight of it all crushing down on me. I should be ashamed to admit that I can’t say if I am more afraid of what will happen if I say yes, or the fact that there’s an if rather than a when.

Gran died last year, and it’s been…it’s been hard. I miss her so much, if it weren’t for Everly I never would have made it. Gran left me her flower shop in the will, Everly’s been helping me run it since I took it over. She’s been so great, best friend I could ask for only…she’s been different lately… since she got back from this trip, she went on to see some distant family. She never had much in the family department either, so when she found out one of her great aunts was still alive, she was so excited to visit. I was happy for her; I couldn’t wait to hear all about it when she got home. Her aunt owned an old mine apparently. And she was so excited to get to tour it with her, but the day after she said she’d be touring it…she stopped answering my texts, my calls, and I was so worried. I didn’t want to be paranoid or clingy or anything, but I just… I couldn’t help but think of the worst. You know? What if she got hurt? Got in an accident? Met somebody and decided to elope and leave me behind? I don’t know, I just, I needed to know she was alright, that she hadn’t been responding for some dumb reason like she lost her phone. I just—I was so worried it felt like my chest was getting crushed by this invisible weight. I couldn’t lose Everly too you know?

But…when…when she got back from the trip, she just…she said she’d been really busy, but she’d missed me. And I think I was going to ask more questions? But then she hugged me? And I mean it’s not like we hadn’t hugged before? But it was… it was different this time. It was crushing, I mean she’s always been taller than me, she’s always calling me shortstack and stuff…but it wasn’t that. It was like she just enveloped me in her arms and held on so tight it was actually really hard to breathe…but also it was kind of comforting? I mean I missed her while she was gone. But I couldn’t really breathe like that, so I had to ask her to let go a little bit, but I almost had to repeat myself. And I know that a too tight hug isn’t much to go on… it’s not even that weird. But it was… it was the beginning of a long list of weird things that happened.

  
We were always close before, but after she got back… it got to be… a lot. Like all concept of personal space just went out the window, she’d loom a lot more too.  
Things started to get really strange when we had one of our movie nights. We’d always curl up in front of the TV in my flat and watch movies. We had this beanbag, it was big enough for two people, so sometimes we’d share. That wasn’t entirely out of the ordinary. It was just that, when she turned off all the lights and closed the blinds, the room felt claustrophobic in a way it hadn’t before. It was like when the lights went off and I couldn’t see where the walls were anymore, they just moved closer so the only space left in the room was what I could see. Which wasn’t much.

We shared the beanbag that night which wasn’t abnormal, like I said. But what was weird was the way it felt. I’m not going to lie Everly has been the most important person in my life for a long time, I couldn’t pinpoint a specific moment when that love stopped just being platonic, but it’s been so long it doesn’t matter when. I always got butterflies when she was close. But this time she curled up half on top of me, her head on my shoulder, and it was like the beanbag turned into quicksand. Her hair was in my face and it was hard to breathe again, but I didn’t say anything that time. I just, I liked being close, even if it was a bit smothering. I couldn’t really move from that position, whenever I shifted it felt like I just sunk deeper into the beanbag, and like Ev just ended up more on top of me.

I guess we must have fell asleep like that, because I woke up still practically eaten by the beanbag and with Everly on top of me, and it was getting actually really hard to breathe so I tried to adjust without waking her up. I managed to wiggle one of my arms back up so that I could grab the back of the beanbag as leverage. But when I reached back, I smacked my hand into the wall. I yelped and that woke Everly up. She was all drowsy and mumbling and she asked what was going on. And I just I started to freak out because, the beanbag wasn’t supposed to be against the wall. It was in the middle of the room, and I just started imagining if the walls were really as close as the dark made them feel, and it just made it so much harder to breathe. I started rambling about the walls being closer and not being able to breathe, and she jumped off of me like I’d burned her. Only she didn’t go far. Just the floor right in front of the beanbag, so at least I knew that the room was big enough for one beanbag plus an Everly.

I’d gotten myself all worked up, and I was trying to climb out of the beanbag and rambling about turning the light back on. But Everly just told me “no”, actually kind of snapped it at me. She apologized immediately after, said she was just tired and cranky. She pushed me back into the beanbag and told me to go back to sleep, that it was just a bad dream, the room wasn’t going to suffocate us in our sleep. I believed her then, of course I did. It was only logical right? So back to sleep we went, this time at least though she rearranged us so I was half sprawled across her, instead of the other way around, she was holding onto me a little too tight, but I could breathe better at least.

Things just… escalated from there. We have some gardens out back of the shop where we grow a lot of the flowers. Going out and tending the flowers is part of the routine, but one day we went out there, and the soil just… it’s not supposed to be that soft okay? it just didn’t make sense. It was like every step I took I was sinking a bit deeper into the earth. I was trying to convince myself I was just being silly, or paranoid, or-or something, but fifteen minutes in and I was up to my calves in dirt and I couldn’t move anymore. I yelled for Everly and I looked over and she was just as deep in the dirt as I was, and she just…just looked at me. Didn’t do anything for a solid minute and I swear to you, I felt my feet sinking deeper and the flowers that I’d loved so dearly were bending towards me, and the leaves were reaching for me. I couldn’t breathe for a second I was so scared. I managed to yell her name again, and she snapped out of whatever daze she was in, and she managed to pull herself out of the dirt and yank me out too.

We went inside early after that and she just held me so tightly and so close, and told me everything would be okay. That I was stressed. That things had been rough lately. I hadn’t slept well the night before. And I believed her. Maybe not because I actually believed her, but I wanted to. And it made sense didn’t it? To believe her? What else could it be? That the ground actually wanted to swallow me whole? Once I calmed down enough, she started suggesting that we go camping like we used to. She wanted us to take off early the next day since it was Friday anyway and spend the weekend camping. There were a dozen reasons why I should’ve said no, things we needed to do with the shop none the least of which. But I’ve never been very good at saying no to Everly. So, camping it was.

We went to the same spot we used to, and I thought sleeping on the ground in our sleeping bags just under the open night sky would be good you know? Help some of that claustrophobia I’d been feeling lately. It was good at first. Really good actually. We hiked up our favorite trail, up to our favorite tree. Where we always seemed to have all of our most important conversations, and she stopped and just looked at me. She looked at me like she had something she wanted to tell me, but she looked so scared in that moment. I felt the ground under my feet shift, literally, felt my shoes start sinking and I was scared. Then she kissed me, and I was just…happy really incandescently happy. I won’t go into much more detail on that part, you and your stuffy research institute don’t need the details of how it felt to kiss the woman of my dreams, and how she told me she’d been pining away for all these years just like I had. How we laughed ourselves sick at how much time we’d let pass us by without doing anything. In that moment I was sure it was the best day of my life. And maybe it was. But then the sun went down and it was night.

We bedded down in our favorite camping spot and set our sleeping bags pressed up against each other, closer than before. I fell asleep to the stars above and her warmth at my side.

I woke up to the earth pressing in all around me, and dirt spilling on my face. I screamed as much as I could, but there wasn’t much air down there. Then Everly was there. It was like she just grew out of the dirt above me, like some kind of angel of the earth. I was crying then; I wasn’t sure when I started. She just brushed the tears from my face with her dusty fingers and she kissed the questions off my lips, leaving the taste of wet soil on my tongue. She told me then, what really happened when she went on that tour of the mine with her aunt. About the way the weight of the earth was so crushing, so heavy, but so blissful at the same time. About how peaceful it was in soil soft as a cloud. The way the roots of the flowers I’d given so much love too, yearned to have me twined amongst them, held so safe, and so close, and so loved. She wanted me to join her in it, said she could practically taste it. That the earth would love me too, that it did love me, and she knew because she loved me, and she was part of the crush of the soil now.

I was so scared, and not just of what she was saying, of the way I couldn’t move, of how shallow my breaths had gotten. I was afraid of how much I wanted that peace, that belonging, to be with her forever.

I didn’t say yes though. Not then at least. I told her I wasn’t ready, that I didn’t want to die suffocating, buried alive. I even yelled, as much as I could considering the lack of air, and she let me go. For the time being at least. Once I could, I ran like the devil was on my heels, and the earth seemed to tug at my feet with every step begging to drag me down into its embrace.

She didn’t show up for a few days after that. The flower shop was lonely without her. I was lonely without her. Then a few days ago… she started showing up at night, when my room is dark, and I can’t see the walls anymore. I can hear her voice coming from underneath the floorboards, from deep down in the dirt. She tells me how much she loves me, how much the earth loves me. Sometimes I swear my room is only as big as my bed is, the walls closing in and crushing, like that night under the stars.

  
I haven’t been sleeping needless to say. I thought coming here might help me figure out what to do… and I think it has. It’s funny in a twisted way. The two great loves of my life, gardening, and Everly Wayland. They’ve become so entwined, so crushingly close together…I—I’m so tired. I’m so tired now, of all of it.

  
I think I’ll go try and sleep. I think I’ll go back to my shop, and I think I’ll lay amongst my flowers, let the soft petals caress my face, and I think I’ll close my eyes and wait for her.

Statement Ends.


End file.
